Grateful Thanks to the Founding Generation

Grateful Thanks to the Founding Generation

By Lawrence W. Reed

The date was December 4, 1783.

The place was an establishment at the corner of Broad and Pearl Streets in lower Manhattan, New York City, known to this very day as Fraunces Tavern.

The occasion was an assembly of officers of the Continental Army, soldiers whose remarkable sacrifices had produced a peace treaty three months earlier, ending the American Revolution.

General George Washington had commanded that army from its inception in June 1775. There at Fraunces Tavern on December 4, 1783, tears streaming down his haggard face, he raised a glass and bade his men farewell with these words:

With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.

Washington would live another 16 years, passing away at the age of 67 on December 14, 1799. And of course, during those momentous years he would preside as chairman of the convention that produced the Constitution and then serve two terms as the new country’s first President.

Over the years, the popular view about why Washington wept that day at Fraunces Tavern is a very understandable one: He loved his men, and they loved him back. It is not easy for anyone to say goodbye to friends so dear. Together, Washington and his officers had suffered hardships that would have crushed those of lesser mettle, which is most of us.

Historians have good reason to believe another factor weighed more heavily on Washington that day than sentimentality. He had failed to get a nearly bankrupt Congress to compensate the men for their efforts. Most who served in the Army—officers as well as the ordinary troops—had not been paid for months, even years in many cases. Now they were going home to their penniless families with nothing to show for it all but a free country.

A free country! That’s not exactly nothing, you say. And you’d be darned right. It was, in fact, one of the most extraordinary achievements in human history. A gaggle of colonies, dwarfed in every respect by the mother country except in spirit and resolve, took that mother country to the mat and won despite the odds.

It was a thunderous echo of something the rebellious Scots declared back in 1320 when they too beat the English: “It is not for honors or glory or wealth that we fight, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.”

The compensation issue, fortunately, was not yet finished when Washington took leave of his men at Fraunces Tavern. Congress would finally address it on terms those courageous men could accept, as I wrote in this piece a few months ago.

With this year’s Thanksgiving just a few days behind us, and America’s 250th anniversary only months away, gratitude is very much on my mind. I understand some people are quick to find fault with the country’s Founding generation. They didn’t go far enough! Some of them owned slaves! They didn’t give the vote to women! And more, of course. Smugness is cheap as one stands on the shoulders of those who came before, even if they put us on the path to what we have today.

I look forward to the celebrations of America’s 250th next year with immense gratitude for what men like George Washington accomplished back in their day. They were no more perfect than you or me, but did they move the needle? You bet they did, far more than almost any of us will likely move it in our lifetimes. After victory over Britain, they set a new country on a course of individual liberty that previous generations could only imagine in their wildest fantasies.

The Declaration of Independence and the subsequent Constitution set the stage but not even the Founders believed those documents were the end of the story. Many of them were, in fact, impatient that liberty’s business was yet unfinished. But America’s birth meant that we could grow and, in time, fulfill the promise of liberty for all. So even if you think the Founding generation did not go far enough, you can be grateful that its men and women took us further in the right direction than any other generation, anywhere.

I wish I could go back in a time machine to that emotional moment at Fraunces Tavern on December 4, 1783. I would shed tears just as Washington did. They would be tears of gratitude for what he and his amazing generation won and then bequeathed to generations they didn’t know and never met.

Well done, thy good and faithful servants!

For additional information, see:

Remembering the Ideas of March by Lawrence W. Reed

Why Washington Wept by Thomas Fleming

The Fraunces Tavern Museum website

The Courage and Inspiration of the Scots by Lawrence W. Reed

Give Me Liberty! – Patrick Henry’s Speech by Lawrence W. Reed

Happy Birthday, Freedom! – The Free Society Coalition brochure

Presentism Imperils Our Future by Distorting Our Past by Lawrence W. Reed

America: The Roman Connection by Lawrence W. Reed

Centenarians for Liberty by Lawrence W. Reed

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(Lawrence W. Reed is President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty at the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia. He blogs at www.lawrencewreed.com.)